Outstanding quality.

While large print albums show off your photographs at their best sometimes a more modestly sized book does the trick.

I have been using Shutterfly for maybe two decades to make annual picture calendars for friends. The quality of printing, color accuracy and paper quality are all top quality.

However, Shutterfly also offers a book printing service and I have ordered a couple of these recently, each with approximately 50 pages. The paper is thick and opaque so back-to-back printing is feasible for there is no bleed through of images. Black and white images are printed to a rich, deep finish.

The thing I most dislike about their service is the constant nagging/upselling with more special offers than there are crooks in the White House. What I have found to be the best strategy is to compose your book, save it on their site then wait for a day or two as the email offers start rolling in. Typically I max out at about a 40% discount, meaning that a 50 page 8.5″ x 11″ book comes to some $90 shipped. Turnaround is normally a week or so.

I upload 2,000 x 2,000 pixel prints from LRc to their site and the included tools there are outstanding when it comes to composing and arranging content. If your uploads are too small you will be warned. Nice. I have yet to figure out how to automatically add page numbers so have to do this by hand, one page at a time, which is a pain. Also I cannot work out how to add narrative to the spine, using a Brother label printer instead. Mine has 20 years on it and has never failed. Otherwise there is little to complain about. Adding text is easy and there’s a large choice of fonts. I tend to keep words to a minimum, letting the images provide the narrative.

Printing and binding quality are high.
The prints are made on semi-matte paper.

A large print 13″ x 19″ Itoya album with 48 paper prints costs some $140 to make so while considerably smaller the Shutterfly book is also less costly.

To see my latest book – ‘Moments – 50 years of street snaps’ – click here.